Eat Lion Meat

A small Arizona restaurant quietly announced to their newsletter recipients a few days ago that, in honor of the World Cup, they’d be serving an African Lion burger for a few days. One of the recipients, an animal rights activist, sparked this smallish story into a worldwide flash fire culinary controversy, and now, CNN has the details on just what exactly goes into a lion burger.

If you’re one of the brave souls that wants to have yourself a lion burger (which is actually just a portion of lion meat mixed with ground beef), you’ll have to go to Phoenix and dine at Il Vinaio some time in the next few weeks. Or you could buy your own at a questionably legal exotic meat market.

Though we’ve written here about exotic meat markets before, but we’ve never sliced more deeply into the sourcing for such strange, savory treats. Annalyn Censky did just that when she contacted first the restaurateur in Arizona and, subsequently, his meat source for African Lion in (why not?) a suburb of Chicago. When asked where he got his lion meat, he said it was a byproduct from an animal skinning business an associate of his had. When asked where the associate got the lions, he responded, "He has his sources, and I do not infringe on his business, just as he does not infringe on mine."

Is it bad that this seems to make it more delicious? As Homer Simpson once said, “Mmm, sacrilicious.” And remember: If you don’t eat the lion, the lion will eat you.